5 November 1928 – 11 November 1928

And this shall be written for my own pleasure. But that phrase inhibits me; for if one writes only for one’s own pleasure, I don’t know what it is that happens. I suppose the convention of writing is destroyed: therefore one does not write at all. I am rather headachy and dimly obscured with sleeping draught. This is the aftermath (what does that mean?—Trench, whom I open idly apparently says nothing) of Orlando. Yes, yes: since I wrote here I have become two inches and a half higher in the public view. I think I may say that I am now among the well known writers. I had tea with Lady Cunard—might have lunched or dined any day. I found her in a little cap telephoning. It was not her atmosphere—this of solitary talk. She is too shrewd to expand and needs society to make her rash and random which is her point. Ridiculous little parakeet faced woman; but not quite sufficiently ridiculous. I kept wishing for superlatives; could not get the illusion to flap its wings. Flunkeys, yes: but a little drab and friendly. Marble floor, yes: but no glamour; no tune strumming, for me at least. And the two of us sitting there had almost to be conventional and flat—reminds me of Sir Thomas Browne—the greatest book of our times—said a little flatly by a woman of business, to me who don’t believe in that kind of thing unless launched with champagne and garlands. Then in came Lord Donegall, a glib Irish youth, dark, sallow, slick, on the Press. “Don’t they treat you like a dog?” I said. “No, not at all,” he replied, astonished that a marquis could be treated like a dog by anyone. And then we went up and up to see pictures on stairs, in ballrooms and finally to Lady C.’s bedroom, hung entirely with flower pieces. The bed has its triangular canopy of rose red silk; the windows, looking on the Square, are hung with green brocade. Her poudreuse—like mine only painted and gilt—stood open with gold brushes, looking glasses, and there on her gold slippers were neatly laid gold stockings. All this paraphernalia for one stringy old hop o’ my thumb. She set the two great musical boxes playing and I said did she lie in bed and listen to them? But no. She has nothing fantastic in that way about her. Money is important. She told me rather sordid stories of Lady Sackville never visiting her without fobbing something off on her—now a bust, worth £5, for which she paid £100: now a brass knocker. “And then her talk—I didn’t care for it . . .” Somehow I saw into these sordid commonplace talks and could not sprinkle the air with gold dust easily. But no doubt she has her acuity, her sharp peck at life; only how adorable, I thought, as I tiptoed home in my tight shoes, in the fog, in the chill, could one open one of these doors that I still open so venturously, and find a live interesting real person, a Nessa, a Duncan, a Roger. Someone new, whose mind would begin vibrating. Coarse and usual and dull these Cunards and Colefaxes are—for all their astonishing competence in the commerce of life. And I cannot think what to write next. I mean the situation is, this Orlando is of course a very quick brilliant book. Yes, but I did not try to explore. And must I always explore? Yes I think so still. Because my reaction is not the usual. Nor can I even after all these years run it off lightly. Orlando taught me how to write a direct sentence; taught me continuity and narrative and how to keep the realities at bay. But I purposely avoided of course any other difficulty. I never got down to my depths and made shapes square up, as I did in the Lighthouse. Well but Orlando was the outcome of a perfectly definite, indeed overmastering, impulse. I want fun. I want fantasy. I want (and this was serious) to give things their caricature value. And still this mood hangs about me. I want to write a history, say of Newnham or the women’s movement, in the same vein. The vein is deep in me—at least sparkling, urgent. But is it not stimulated by applause? overstimulated? My notion is that there are offices to be discharged by talent for the relief of genius: meaning that one has the play side; the gift when it is mere gift, unapplied gift; and the gift when it is serious, going to business. And one relieves the other. Yes, but The Moths? That was to be an abstract mystical eyeless book: a playpoem. And there may be affectation in being too mystical, too abstract; saying Nessa and Roger and Duncan and Ethel Sands admire that; it is the uncompromising side of me; therefore I had better win their approval. Again, one reviewer says that I have come to a crisis in the matter of style: it is now so fluent and fluid that it runs through the mind like water. That disease began in the Lighthouse. The first part came fluid—how I wrote and wrote! Shall I now check and consolidate, more in the Dalloway and Jacob’s Room style? I rather think the upshot will be books that relieve other books: a variety of styles and subjects: for after all, that is my temperament, I think, to be very little persuaded of the truth of anything—what I say, what people say—always to follow, blindly, instinctively with a sense of leaping over a precipice—the call of —the call of—now, if I write The Moths I must come to terms with these mystical feelings. X destroyed our Saturday walk: he is now mouldy and to me depressing. He is perfectly reasonable and charming. Nothing surprises, nothing shocks him. He has been through it all, one feels. He has come out rolled, smoothed, rather sodden, rather creased and jumbled, like a man who has sat up all night in a third class railway carriage. His fingers are stained yellow with cigarettes. One tooth in the lower jaw is missing. His hair is dank. His eyes more than ever dubious. He has a hole in his blue sock. Yet he is resolute and determined—that’s what I find so depressing. He seems to be sure that it is his view that is the right one: ours vagaries, deviations. And if his view is the right one, God knows there is nothing to live for: not a greasy biscuit. And the egotism of men surprises and shocks me even now. Is there a woman of my acquaintance who could sit in my armchair from 3 to 6:30 without the semblance of a suspicion that I may be busy, or tired, or bored; and so sitting could talk, grumbling and grudging, of her difficulties, worries; then eat chocolates, then read a book, and go at last, apparently self-complacent and wrapped in a kind of blubber of misty selfsalutation? Not the girls at Newnham or Girton. They are far too spry; far too disciplined. None of that self confidence is their lot.